الكاتب
Mark Murphy quizzes fellow designers to come up with a brilliant list of Photoshop productivity shortcuts.
Deadline
looming? Clients and bosses breathing down your neck? Are you wondering
just where all that time went and how in the name of the holy CS you're
going to get this project out the door by 5:30pm? Of course there's no
excusing your habitual procrastination and frankly cavalier attitude to
Facebook breaks, but we all know that when you're racing toward zero
hour, every second counts. It's times like this when every element of
your work needs to flow together efficiently, minimising 'hover' time
between tasks while still allowing you to keep the bigger picture in
mind.
It was with this in mind that creating a basic but invaluable cheat-sheet for Photoshop CS6 made so much sense. After quizzing designers across the Precedent
digital design agency and mixing in some of my own favourites, I
gathered a comprehensive list of our collective top tips for using any
Photoshop from CS3 onwards.
Whether you're a Photoshop
Padawan or an Adobe aficionado, there's sure to be at least one tip in
here that will ratchet up your workflow and save you time and hassle.
01. Paste in place
- Shortcut: Cmd+Shift+V
An
obvious but no less valuable place to start, paste in place isn't a
default setting when copying elements across multiple Photoshop
documents. Some designers have been witnessed pushing pixels trying to
match up elements to perfection from a source document. Avoid the
unnecessary risk of human error and save time to boot!
02. Quick group multiple layers
- Shortcut: Cmd+G
Good
housekeeping is crucial to use layers effectively. This becomes
critical when creating PSDs with many (potentially hundreds) of layers.
With states, styles and sections of the design grouped and clearly
labelled this will also aid the poor developer when he or she is at the
receiving end of your design. To create groups quickly and avoid the
confusion that comes with many selecting similar layers, simply select
the layers you wish to group and, once highlighted, hit Cmd+G. There you have it! All layers selected are now in that group.
03. Alt-click layer marquee
This is most effective when joining different shaped elements across layers for a mask. Holding Alt
whilst hovering over the vector or layer thumbnails will change the
cursor into a hand with a marquee. When clicked, a marquee will
automatically be applied to the perimeter of that shape or object. In
addition, holding Shift will allow you to select and join multiple marquees: great for quick masking.
Tip provided by Pal, senior designer, Precedent London
04. Create a layer blending shortcut
The
first thing I do when installing an oven-fresh Photoshop instance is
set up a shortcut for blending options. This isn't a shortcut as
standard but can be easily configured and you can choose any combination
of keys you deem fit. Using this shortcut to open the blending dialogue
saves an enormous amount of time cumulatively when editing layer styles
rather then laboriously selecting blending options from the layer
dropdown.
Tip by Ed, senior designer, Precedent Cardiff
05. Snap element to grid
This
little number has got to be the worst kept secret for anyone using
Photoshop to create web elements. If you're aspiring to pixel perfection
with buttons, navigation or other vector elements, select this lesser
known 'snap to pixel' check box from the vector shape dropdown. Bingo,
no more fiddling with anchors to remove pixel bleed.
((ما يلفظ من قول إلا لديه رقيب عتيد))